Toy Guns in New Zealand

"What I noticed in my other workplace, when we banned it, was that the children would hide and shoot you – they get sneaky about it. The play would turn quite negative,” she tells The Dominion Post.

"We teach them you don't leave [guns] lying on the floor, you don't shoot people, you make sure you ask to borrow someone else's gun."

The guns are made by the children out of cardboard or paper and must be stored in a gun rack between play sessions.

It doesn't make much sense to me to teach kids that guns are OK as long as they don't shoot other kids with them and as long as they ask permission before taking someone else's. The purpose of guns is to shoot people. Why do so many gun extremists make such an effort to deny that?

Guns are bad news for kids and to teach them other than that is bad news for everybody.

7 comments:

"It doesn't make much sense to me to teach kids that guns are OK as long as they don't shoot other kids with them and as long as they ask permission before taking someone else's. "

You must be really mystified that we also teach our kids that cars are okay so long as you don't run over other people and you don't steal them. Perhaps we can all chip in so we can hire a tutor to explain to you the concept of responsible ownership of machines.

"The purpose of guns is to shoot people. Why do so many gun extremists make such an effort to deny that?"

It's not true, that's why. The purpose of guns is to shoot projectiles. The only guns that shoot people are those cannons you see at circuses and such.

"Guns are bad news for kids and to teach them other than that is bad news for everybody."

You sound like my mom. I now own five guns and am on my way to owning five thousand of them. Guess I must be some sort of monster.

Mikeeee W., is that you? C'mon man you can use your name to comment over here. That mention of your mom and the five guns combined with some of the total nonsense you included in that comment, was a dead givaway.

Guns were made to kill prople by shooting bullets at them. Is that better?

New Zealand is probably one of the saner places on the planet, and actually won the least corrupt competition (the US was 27 and falling). Mexico has some of the strictest gun laws and at one time was able to enforce them. Still there was a very brisk trade in modern flintlocks,(as that was all that was legal)for all the other jobs that guns are put to, from vermin control, to subsistence hunting, almost exclusively in the countryside. But I only saw them in the biggest city markets, where the country folk came to buy them.

Now of course anyone can have a gun there and crime rules. But I think sanity and non corruption are bigger issues as New Zealand shows. Fix that and the gun problem goes away, don't and nothing else matters. Jesus's Golden Rule is a good start for those who consider themselves in anyway Christian, but the concept is far more wide spread than the application of it.

Like in Australia, but unlike in the US and Canada, gun laws usually gain the support of both major parties before they are passed.

New Zealand's gun laws are notably more liberal than other countries in the Pacific and focus mainly on vetting firearm owners, rather than registering firearms or banning certain types of firearms.

Anyone buying firearms or ammunition, whether privately or from a dealer, needs to show their firearms licence. In addition, a permit to procure must be obtained prior to the transfer of pistols, military-style semi-automatics and restricted weapons. Sales can be made by mail-order, but a police officer must sign the order form to verify that the purchaser has a firearms licence.